Chad Lowe joins brother Rob Lowe on 9-1-1: Lone Star: 'It wasn't a huge stretch'

Members of the 126 consider each other family on 9-1-1: Lone Star, but Monday's episode will see Capt. Owen Strand meeting his actual brother.

As part of his therapy, Owen (Rob Lowe) will fly to California to see his father for the first time since his family fell apart when he was a kid. But the trip will be much more of a family reunion than Owen anticipated, as he'll meet the half-brother he never knew he had — and EW has an exclusive preview clip below.

When co-creator Time Minear first thought of introducing Owen's extended family, he knew who he wanted to play Owen's brother: Lowe's real-life younger brother, Chad Lowe. "As you can imagine, it wasn't a huge stretch," Chad says.

"Their father is dying and in hospice care, and [when Owen shows up he] meets this man in a waiting room and they have a conversation," Chad says of the episode. "My character doesn't know that my father had had this son in his previous life, because it's been such an estrangement. So I start to describe this incredible father who was the dream, the consummate perfect father figure. And I speak so incredibly glowingly of how much I love him and what a great father he was to me, and this in no way matches Owen's experience of the same man as his father. That is where the incredible twist comes in — kind of a revelation that we're actually brothers."

Chad previously directed Rob in two episodes of Lone Star, as well as on Brothers and Sisters and The Grinder, but this is the first time the brothers have shared the screen since a brief moment in a 1984 drama.

"I did a cameo appearance in a movie that he did called Oxford Blues, and it was a quick little snippet scene that they shot at the end of the movie," Chad says. "I think the director said, 'We need an actor for this tomorrow.' I think Rob turned to me and said, 'You want to do it?' I was like, 'Yeah, I'll do it.' I didn't really consider — I don't think he would either — that our first time working together, really, so I consider this to be the first time we've actually had any substantial screen time together. All of these years, many people have asked, and we've asked ourselves, 'Why have we never acted in anything together?'"

Return to EW after Monday's episode (airing at 9 p.m. ET/PT) for more from Chad on working with his brother — as well as what we can expect from next week's episode, which he's currently directing.

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